I’m afraid there is no easy answer, only a set of goals you can strive for… the numbers below assume a 5% haste buff from someone in your raid since even most 10 mans have this now.

Below you can see how much haste is needed to add an additional tick to each of our HoTs.  Some of these numbers aren’t very achievable at the moment.  My current goal (which I have not yet met) is 2004 haste to buff my wildgrowth.  You can set your own goals based on the information below.  The number in the (parenthesis) assumes you have Dark Intent.

Rejuvenation:
4 ticks by default
5 ticks — 12.5%  = 915 haste (516)
6 ticks — 37.5% = 3964 haste (3476)

Wild Growth:
7 ticks by default
8 ticks 7.1%  = 262 haste
9 ticks 21.4%  = 2004 haste (1573)
10 ticks 35.7%  = 3746 haste (3264)

Regrowth:
3 ticks by default
4 ticks 16.6%  = 1423 haste (1009)

Lifebloom:
10 ticks by default
11 ticks 5% = 0 haste
12 ticks 15%  = 1220 haste (812)
13 ticks 25% = 2440 haste (1996)
14 ticks 35% = 3659 haste (3180)

(numbers from naperken, thanks)

http://restorationdruid.com/2011/01/24/haste-in-cataclysm/

for updated information!!

Haste:

In WotLK haste didn’t effect our heal over time spells (HoTs), unless you glyphed to have it work on your rejuvenation.  If you made this choice (which I didn’t) it would make your heals tick faster, but they would in turn be shorter as a consequence.  Now however, they don’t necessarily get shorter.  At certain haste points your HoT is ticking fast enough to actually get another tick added on.  This determines what haste we are aiming for.

The haste points at which we gain another tick on Rejuvenation are 12.5%, 37.5% and 62.5% haste (see reference).  With Regrowth it’s 16.66%, 50%, and 83.33%, and with Lifebloom it’s 5%, 15%, 25%, 35%, 45%, 55%, 65%, 75%, 85% and 95%.  Since we want as many ticks as possible we should be aiming for as many of these benchmarks as possible.

So What do I need?? So, if you were to set a goal for haste, 1016 haste with raid buffs gives you that 37.5% you need for the extra tick of Rejuvenation.  With Nourish being so slow, Healing Touch being viable, and Lifebloom adding ticks so quickly, if you can go above this haste point it’s not a bad thing, but defiantly try to hit it as a minimum.

Critical Strike

Prior to 4.0.1 a druid’s HoTs were unable to crit, with the exception of rejuvenation if you were using your tier nine 4-piece bonus.  That is no longer the case, now every tick of every HoT has the ability to crit.

My Thoughts on this: I feel like crit is a far better stat for a DPS than it is for us.  On a boss, every time you crit and deal extra damage, its simply that, extra damage.  As a healer, when you crit there is always a good chance that it goes to overheal.  Plus, I don’t like relying on a “chance” to crit.  That being said, of course crit isn’t bad for us, and sure it’s nice when things do crit.  I just think that it’s still not going to be a stat I focus on, rather it will be a stat that tags along on my gear that is no longer worthless.

Before we get started, wowtal.com has a nifty little tool that lets you import your talents from their website right into WoW!  I have the script below for you to import these talents if you choose to start with my spec as your basis.

Restoration Tree:

Blessing of the Grove 2/2 – A straight 4% increase to rejuvenation seems like a good thing to me And we need clicks up here to get to lower stuff

Natural Shapeshifter 0/2- I skip this… I see it’s usefulness for PVP, and I also see the value of the skill below it (Master Shapeshifter) but I think my 3 talent points could be better spent, and get me things more valuable.

Naturalist 2/2 – Now that we cast nourish so much, this is a must have!

Heart of the Wild 3/3 – Intellect is spell power and mana pool, yes please

Perseverance 0/3- Seems liek a PVP talent, skipped it

Master Shapeshifter 0/1- I understand why a person would spend 3 clicks on unlocking this, I don’t think it’s a bad choose, but I wanted to spend my points elsewhere

Improved Rejuvenation 3/3- I use swiftmend pretty much every CD… so improving rejuve and swiftmend is a no-brainer

Living Seed 3/3 –  Living Seed is okay, but really I’m taking this to get Efflorescence

Revitalize 2/2 – Regen for me personally, as well as raid replenishment if needed

Nature’s Swiftness 1/1 – If I was going to move a talent it would probably be this one, cuz honestly I don’t use it very much… but I like having an oh f*^k button, and this macroed to healing touch is mine.  

Fury of Stormrage 0/2 – I have it in my resto-DPS spec… but nope, not in my main raid healing spec

Nature’s Bounty 3/3 – Regrowth is expensive, if I’m gonna cast it I want it to crit.

Empowered Touch 2/2 –  Sadly resto-druiding has come to a lot of nourish spamming… the 10% is nice, but refreshing my lifebloom on the tank is even nicer!!

Malfurion’s Gift 2/2-  Mana return, obviously

Effloresence 3/3 – It’s not as nice as the blue circles and gold circles other healers have, but I still like to make people group up in my little green circles of healing

Wild Growth 1/1 – Must have for healing the raid

Nature’s Cure 1/1 – My guildies would kill me if I didn’t pickup cleanse magic… especially important if you’re running 10 mans IMO

Nature’s Ward 0/2 – Seems pretty PVPish

Gift of the Earth Mother 3/3 – Okay, the extra healing from lifebloom is nice, but the main reason I wanted this was that 15% instant on rejuvenation.  God I loved that t-8 set bonus, and this is very reminiscent of that

Swift Rejuvenation 0/1 – I don’t blanket the raid anymore… so the 1 sec GCD isn’t necessary.  It’s a good talent situationally (think Chimaeron with 2 healers) but generally it’s not needed

Tree of Life 0/1 – It doesn’t thrill me… I posted about it here if you wanna read.

Balance Tree

Nature’s Majesty 2/2 – 4% to crit, our HoTs can crit now… I don’t rely on crit, but it’s still nice to have

Nature’s Grace 0/3 – See Starlight Wrath

Starlight Wrath 3/3 – I choose this to spend 3 clicks in to get me to the second tier of talents, but Nature’s Grace would also do the trick.

Moonglow 2/3 -  As an aggressive healer, I really value the mana reduction.  I am defiantly pleased with my choice to spec down to this  Especially when you do a lot of 2-healing and can’t afford to have “downtime”

Genesis 0/3 – I choose not to get it, but maybe someday when mana isn’t an issue it’ll seam appealing.

Feral Tree

Furor 3/3 - Mana pool, seems obvious

Import my skills to your WoW talent preview

/run t,p,a={3,12,32,43,73,83,92,101,123,132,142,153,161,171,193,1,23,32,52,2,23,}SetPreviewPrimaryTalentTree(t[1],GetActiveTalentGroup())for i=1,#t do a=t[i]if a<9 then p=a else AddPreviewTalentPoints(p,floor(a/10),a%10)end end

Different people have different healing styles, guild types, group comps, and levels of content that they tackle.  There can be more than one “right” spec, depending on the person.  Use my talents as a jumping point and tailor them to suit your needs! This is a very mana conscious spec to allow for extremely aggressive healing  If that is not your style, adjust according!

click to enlarge	General The first screen you see when you open HealBot is the “General” tab. From here you can disable HealBot, choose to put it on your mini-map, ect. Nothing really exciting here that needs to be changed!
click to enlarge	Spells The second tab of HealBot is your spells tab. This is where you assign heals, cures, etc to different mouse click and key combinations. If you have an on-use trinket, you can use this to auto-cast it with certain spells. I have my Sliver of Pure Ice on auto-trinket to maximize the mana I get back from it. Also, you can assign a macro (instead of a spell) to a click so you could include your trinket or other non-spells into HealBot this way. Holy Nova (for example) is not cast on another player, but so that I could cast it more quickly I just assigned a key combination to a casting macro in HealBot on my priest.Also on this tab is “SmartCast when out of combat” which I choose to use for quick buffing and resurrecting while out of combat. You can enable it using the check box.
click to enlarge	Skins – Healing Next, we are going to look under the Skins tab, in the subsection “Healing”. This is where you choose who to have on your HealBot bars. You can see right now I have “Focus” selected because I set Valithria Dreamwalker as my focus target when healing that fight, and want her included on my bars. I usually have the boss set to focus, but it only includes friendly targets on HealBot so it’s not a problem to just keep this checked. I choose to ignore pets when raiding, but on my leveling characters running mostly 5-mans I have that checked.
click to enlarge	Skins – Healing – Raid Under the Healing subsection, is another subsection called “Raid”. This is where you can choose what raid groups to show. Sometimes we have D/C or on-call people sitting in group 8 and I can choose to not show them here.
click to enlarge	Skins – Icons The Icons section on the Spells tab lets you show what spells are currently rolling on your targets. I have mine set to show druid HoTs, but only the ones cast by me. I have found that I frankly don’t care what everyone else is doing, I keep HoTting the raid, and I don’t want it all junking up my bars. But it IS very helpful to see what HoTs I have rolling on what people, and since the icons fade as the spell gets close to fading, I know who needs a refresh. Also, HealBot does pickup rejuvenation cast by your t-10 bonus, so you can see that too!You can also choose to show raid marks from this screen. Since DBM and other raid mods often put raid-symbols on people for a healing-related reason, I find it is useful to show these marks on my HealBot.
click to enlarge	Skins – Bars This is where you setup what you want your bars to look like. Here is what mine look like: As you can see I choose to have long and narrow bars, and I choose to show the mana bars of my raid members. But you might like a totally different style, and this is where you change that
click to enlarge	Cure – Debuff Under the Cure tab in the “Debuff” subsection you can setup HealBot to show you people with debuffs. I have it set to check the raid for poisons and curses, as taht is what I can remove… and of course have a quick key setup for the appropriate curing spells. Make sure you actually check the box to “Monitor to remove debuffs” and “also in combat” or it won’t do you much good in a raid
click to enlarge	Cure – Custom You can also choose to monitor debuffs that aren’t curses, poisons, etc. One example of something I choose to monitor is “Mark of the Fallen Champion” so that I defiantly make sure I don’t forget who has it, and they get a lot of my healing focus. You can add any debuff you think will be helpful on this tab, and also select a color for your custom debuffs.
click to enlarge	Buffs I hate people who have to be told to buff. Or people who have to be told to rebuff the guy who died. You know, THAT druid? So I use the “Buffs” tab to check the raid for MotW. I also check for Thorns on the tanks using the “Name” option. HINT: when entering the names of people to check, separate them with commas and do NOT use spaces. If you use “SmartCast when out of combat” (on the Spells tab) then you can one-click buff people in need.

If you have any other questions, or if I missed something that you’ve been wondering how to do, leave a comment and I’ll try to update this post to include your question!

So… About a podcast…

A friend and I were kicking around the idea of doing a podcast.  We would basically discuss what’s new in the blue-posts but… that just doesn’t seem like enough.  If anyone has any brilliant ideas for what to talk about, leave a comment, your suggestions are appreciated!

OMG 10 Man!

I’ve been threatening to make a 10 man guild for a long time now… cuz well… I love running 10 man content, and it seems like it’s going to be totally viable in Cataclysm.  Plus, so many guilds are falling apart right now, maybe I can snag a few people?!? So… I’m doing it!  Interested?  Check it out!!

As a general rule I try to match socket bonuses.  I know a lot of people prefer to just gem everything as spell power, but I am not one of them, so unless the socket bonus is super-wank I will match it.  Don’t flame me with your math, I don’t care if you use straight spell power, I don’t.  This is what I use:

Red Socket <– Straight Spell Power
Blue Socket <– Spellpower/Spirit -or- (if going OOM) Straight Spirit
Yellow Socket <– Haste -or- Spell Power/Haste -or- (if soft haste capped) Spell Power/Intellect
Meta <– 21 Spell + 2% Int (Ember) -or- (if you have mana issues) 21 Int + Chance to Restore Mana (Insightful)

These are the enchants that I use:

Helm: 30 SP + 10 mp5, from Wyrmrest Accord
Shoulders: 24 SP + 8mp5, from Sons of Hodir
Cloak: 23 Haste (or if you’re an engineer, spell power!)
Chest: 10 all stats
Bracers: 30 Spell Power
Gloves: 28 Spell Power
Belt: Use a buckle or you suck!
Legs: 50 SP 20 Spirit thread
Boots: 18 Spirit
Weapon: 81 Spell Power (staff)

Hope that helps

So, for people who prefer to look at it in “talent tree” style, here is my spec (Jan 19, 2010 — currently in 3.3.0)

Now I’ll go into my choices a little bit more, so you can understand why I did what I did, and decide if you want to choose the same things as me, or if you think it would be better to make some modifications for your style of healing

Balance Tree

5/5 Genesis – Well, this increases our periodic healing by 5% and we all know how much of our healing is HoTs!

3/3 Moonglow – A 9% reduction in mana cost to most of my spells is always handy in long fights

2/2 Nature’s Majesty - Ok, the 4% crit on Nourish and HT dosen’t hurt… but mostly this is just to get us down to the next level.

1/1 Nature’s Splendor – This is a no-brainer, and a must have… add more time to your HoTs.

Before the GotEM nerf, this is where I stopped on this tree.  If you have 856 haste or above, you can stop here!  If you are not at that haste, we’ll continue down the balance tree a little bit more. Read more about Haste!

3/3 Nature’s Grace – If you happen to be nourish spamming, this is defiantly helpful.  It has come in handy for me on some occasions but, as mention above, you are mainly using it to reach Celestial Focus.  Update: Although I did not have this talent before GotEM’s change, I’ve decided to keep it despite being haste capped.  Occasionally I’m spamming out regrowths, and frankly the talents I’m missing out on, on the resto tree, aren’t that appealing anyway!

1/3 Brambles – This is defiantly a filler click.  It coulda gone anywhere on this tree, I threw it here because our paladin tank is always bugging me for thorns so I thought, what the heck!

3/3 Celestial Focus – And this ladies and gentlemen is what we came this far down for… not the push back… the 3% spell haste.  Again, if you are at or above 856 haste, read what I said above, you shouldn’t bother coming down here!

Restoration Tree

2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild – OMG 2% to stats!?!

3/3 Nature’s Focus – Well… normally I’m casting instant things anyway but… so this is a bit filler-ish… but still, I guess I occasionally cast these things so it’s not totally wasted!

3/3 Subtlety – Yeah, it reduces threat… usually not an issue… helps prevent dispel… also not a huge issue outside of PvP but… better than the other choices on the tree so three of three it is!

3/3 Natural Shapeshifter – simply to get us to the next skill down

3/3 Intensity – Dear God, thank you for spirit based mana regen, I will always be a spirit whore.

1/1 Omen of Clarity – Free spells are good, and it procs a lot

2/2 Master Shapeshifter – Adds an extra 4%

3/3 Improved Rejuvenation – Should I increase the effectiveness of my most cast spell?  Yeah, probably

1/1 Nature’s Swiftness – I have this macroed to healing touch and I call it my “Oh F*ck” Button.  Nice in an emergency!

5/5 Gift of Nature – Um, duh?

5/5 Nature’s Bounty – Yeah, I’ve said I don’t cast these a lot, but when I do, it’s probably because my HoTs are behind and I really need them to crit!

3/3 Living Spirit – No really, I’m a spirit whore, I can’t get enough…

1/1 Swiftmend –  I use this a lot, its great to “catch up” when HoTs fall behind, and even more amazing when glyphed!

5/5 Empowered Rejuvenation – Again, Duh?!?

3/3 Living Seed – I know you’ll see some druids skipping this talent, and that’s fine.  I choose to keep it in, it’s nice in some situations.  I’m not gonna say it’s an amazing must-have talent though

1/1 Tree of Life – Some of these talents… really need no explanation…

3/3 Improved Tree of Life – Yeah so, the official math is: spirit whore + living spirit + improve ToL = Win!

5/5 Gift of the Earthmother – Hi, I’m Angela, I like haste.

1/1 Wild Growth – Of course… and glyph it too!  :)

And that’s that…. when you’re haste is high enough to not need celestial focus, you’ll have 7 more clicks to play around with however you want.  None of the talents we skipped are amazing but hey, experiment and see what you like.  I also want to mention, for leveling up I do put 5/5 into Naturalist and then glyph healing touch, and use healing touch the way I use Nourish at 80.

Hey I Hit the Non-CF Haste Cap!

Congratulations of getting your haste way up there!   Me too!  Now that I no longer need Celestial Focus I use 14-0-57 and I would suggest some variation of it  This is basically the same as above only I throw some points back into revitalize, cuz it never hurts to have!  But… haste first!  Don’t change over unless you’ll be capped without CF.